fragments
by catlapmilk
Summary: I press my heart into the palms of your hands, and you eat. Eren/Annie.


01

Her knees are pale save the mottling of bruises littered around the cap, creeping up to the inside of her inner thigh; long and graceful deer legs, looking just upwards of brittle though he can feel every sinew threaded beneath her flesh with the tips of his fingers. Every mark left behind that marrs her milky flesh is from him, yes, but only because she will let him; he's seen her floor a man twice her size and three times her weight like it was nothing, and it had left him with a flurry captive in the pit of his stomach. She keeps her eyes half-lidded for him, always on the cusp of sleep, like he's something she will bore of, and it only serves to make him crave her.

He loves every piece of her, in a way that makes him ill. Pinpricks in his heart when he looks at her; in his mouth when he kisses her. Her lips swell under his ravenous want of her, blood welling like a blooming rose just under her skin, and their mouths slide together so perfectly he wonders how they will ever be able to work any other way. The way she plays weak for him is his complete undoing - he knows this, feels this as her belly shifts under his hands, as her back arches and her legs fall open for him. She is a balance of soft and terrifying and she knows it; his ego is a fragile thing, susceptible to manipulative inflation as it is to malicious destruction. In the dark he forgets this, hungry touches and haphazard kisses speckled all over her trembling body, and she fights back with everything she has. For all the distance she tries to keep she still digs into him with all ten fingernails, opening him up and slipping inside. There is no defense he has that keeps her out and away. The air feels like sticky, suffocating summer between them.

Her customary silence is dispelled, fizzling out like a light, as his lips meet the racing pulse that thrums rhythmically in her neck. It races quicker with each kiss pressed against it, sighs tumbling out of her mouth and down her chin where he waits to lap them up. Looking at her drives splinters into his chest - she's nearly heart-breaking, as she regards him with long lashes and heavy lids, and when he slides into her he is reminded that she's not as hollow as she so desperately needs him to believe. He sees himself reflected in her as each sob comes choked from the depths of his throat, begging him to leave her alone and sew himself into her all at once.

"You're hurting me," she whispers, longing leaking out of her hands as they skim across his face, neck, shoulders. The room fills with their ragged and tremulous breathing, the sound of rustling sheets; the creaking springs of her bed. He watches the shapes her mouth makes as she whispers, self-control slipping through her thin fingers like sand. "Please, that's enough..."

02

Light filters in, translucent and shimmering on the very tips of the color spectrum like a trembling note on the rim of a wine glass, with the same soft presence as falling snowflakes; it peppers over their leather-clad shoulders and illuminates every last speck of dust floating in the space between them, though there is not much space between them. Kept away from the world in an old storage shed they find a reprieve; she undresses her soul for him, no longer a mentor or a comrade but herself in the simplest form. Words nor blows exchanged she rewards him with a demonstration of kindness - she leaves her undivided attention and her swollen heart at his feet like an offering, and cuts his hair.

Silence insulates the entire room, filling her mouth and the gaps between her fingers, and he doesn't notice the way her eyes narrow slightly as her she brings her middle and pointer fingers together - neatly coiled around the rusting loop of each scissor handle, she only feels minimal ache in her knuckles as she severs each strand of his hair. It floats quietly to the floor, accented by each dull snip; in turn, she neglects the goosebumps that prickle to prominence on the back of his neck at the surprising gentleness with which she handles him. Her hands run through it like she's experiencing fine silk, steady though the swirls of her fingerprints bleed together with the awe of it all; a lost moment of tenderness in their broken world.

When she's finally tossed the scissors away he trembles in her arms like a fault line, her fingers curled longingly at the nape of his neck, cheek pillowed against the crown of his head.

03

She breaks down each remaining day until her placement in the police force like arithmetic in her head; hours shatter like glass into fragments of minutes, diamond dust comprised of seconds until the moment comes. Consequently does it steal away the last bit of oxygen in her lungs and her toes curl in the plain sheets of her bed. Next week will bring her quarters where she will no longer be able to hear the songs of crickets, lulling her to sleep with melodies played on the violin of their tiny legs. Perhaps, she whispers to herself, in the very corners of her mind, there her bedclothes will not be so dull; white sheets speckled with chamomile, petunia, the promise of spring. Her hands stray, pads of her fingers speckling prints over her skin, worshipping idly at the cradle of her hips.

His eyes had been fierce when she'd chose him, reflecting the embers burning in his belly, and he had looked to her more reverently than he would his commander, his king, God himself. She hadn't known what he was then; neither of them had and yet she had still shared herself with him, given him her time and attention. He'd dragged his palms over every inch of her, covered her with his mouth, and she had loved him more desperately than anything before. He'd cleansed her, with those mouth and those eyes, and now he would take her back home.

She tries not to think about how she's already been back home once, mapped out in the lining of his skin; in the golden valley of his throat.

_❝ Sorry about the blood_

_in your mouth._

_I wish it was mine. ❞_

— Richard Siken, "Little Beast."


End file.
